Professor Chung Eui-Heon’s team proposes a new treatment for vascular diseases such as stroke
Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) announced on the 23rd that a team led by Professor Chung Eui-Heon of the Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed an optical imaging technology that can quantitatively measure changes and speed of cerebral blood flow and suggested a new treatment for vascular diseases such as stroke.
The human brain accounts for only 2% of body mass, but consumes 20% of the body’s oxygen and nutrients. Where the brain nerves are activated, blood flow increases to supply oxygen and glucose smoothly. Therefore, measuring the change and rate of cerebral blood flow is very important for understanding cerebral metabolism and cerebrovascular pathology. However, there was a limit to measuring the blood flow velocity, although it was possible to examine the changes before and after the movement of blood flow.
Professor Jeong’s team developed a system that can quantitatively measure the change and speed of cerebral blood flow when a cerebral infarction occurs on the cerebral surface by analyzing speckle, an interference pattern created by irradiating a laser beam to the brain. It is possible to quantitatively measure the speed of blood flow changing in real time only by speckle analysis without mathematical modeling or correction.
The research team made it possible to objectively compare the efficacy of a new treatment for vascular disease by showing a quantitative rate map of blood flow changes in real time in a preclinical ischemic stroke model.
In particular, he presented a method that can be applied to animal disease models by analyzing the real-time movement of blood cells in blood vessels in living tissue using an optical and acoustic modulator.
Professor Chung Eui-heon said, “It is meaningful in that it has overcome the limitations of the existing laser speckle imaging and presented a new technique that can quantitatively analyze the blood flow rate. We look forward to being able to apply it,” he said.
This research was led by Professor Jeong (corresponding author) and conducted by Ph.D. student Moshin Kureshi (first author) of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. This was done with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea’s Center for Senior Researcher Support Project and the GIST Research Institute (GRI). The research paper was published online in the latest issue of ‘Optica’, a renowned academic journal in the field of optics.
Gwangju = Reporter Hansik Kim hskim@etnews.com
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